The author is a poet, counsellor, and occasional scholar-in-residence. Musings on everything from advaita ("non-dualism") to sustainable living, interspersed with poems. Thanks to Zvi Jaspan of Kibbutz Tzora for the name for this blog.

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Dem Jews Blues

When my/your Jewishness is very important to someone elsethey work this preoccupation into the conversationvery soon:"food not kosher enough for you?""I know some very rich people - they became rich because they never gave a cent to anyone...""Martin Cohen - you must know him..."

they know nothing about menot my thoughts, not my historynot my journeybut my Jewishness looms large in their sight"oh is that your Yiddish genes coming out""yes the Jews control Hollywood"I could argueI could cite evidence to the contrarybut something in me whispers it will not helpthat they need to much for me to be a role in their universewhich I refuse to be

Once in a hotel in East LondonI overheard snatches of conversation:a man in a suit, another man, a woman, the man in the suit was telling them"why do you think everybbody 's always hated them...there must be something to itall through history..."he was talking conpiracy

I wanted to walk around and say"Hi, I'm Immanueland I love the sunand to dance and to singand we used to have a dog called Ms Muffetand none of what this man is saying is true."

But I felt too embarassedI've never been one for confrontingand if people want to believe lies, its their affair...

______________________

I'm too hands on to be a theoreticianand too dreamy to be a technician___________________

My definition: "Jew hatred - that phenomenon which allows the pressing problems of the world (poverty, dictatorships, rigidity of thought, religions of resentment, child slavery, homophobia, bigotry of all sorts, unconsciousness) to go unattended to.

So many Jews in the west live a strange half life - going to work, participating in and partaking of the life of their respective countries, contributing, sharing, being part of, and then suddenly you realise the person next to you at soccer or netball practice is openly espousing that your family in Israel are not fully human, and that they be, at best turned into refugees, at worst murdered and its extremely awkward - so many of us have been schooled to avoid conflict, be nice, pretend it will all go away - certainly that is what I do best....

Here's how it goes: the Jews / Israelis are accused of a crime (any incident will do, and the context is always ignored...after all any excuse is good enough for a bully). Along with the accusations of a crime, the idea of Israeli / Jewish power is obsessively doted upon....all evidence to the contrary being supressed. Once the perpetrators have firmly established in their psyche Jewish criminality and power, they have then justified the sewer of violent hatred that pours out from them as they commit real crimes of vandalism and assault upon their victims, Jews and Jew boeties i.e. anyone who dares express their human solidarity with us. Unfortunately we are only at the beginning of the current wave of this process, which generally needs a pile of Jewish corpses before it burns itself out

"Everyone's got to serve someone"

a "hogeh deyot" - Hebrew for someone who thinks a lot about things that are not directly related to the daily round. I worships two G?ds, that are probably one and the same - creativity and balance. Sat. Chit. Ananda. Gila Rina Ditza ve Chedva. Adoshem Hu Elokim. Veshal-om shanti shanti.